The present invention relates generally to an automotive vehicle having a gear select lever of an automatic transmission, and more particularly to a gear select lever locking arrangement.
Automatic transmissions have a gear select lever having a park position, a neutral position and a drive position. In order to lock the gear select lever in the park position after removing an ignition key from a key operated cylinder, there have been proposed various gear select lever locking arrangements.
Japanese Patent Application First (unexamined) Publication 60-135352 discloses a gear select lever locking arrangement. According to this known arrangement, a bell crank lever is pivotable on a detent plate and has one arm connected by a motion transmitting cable to a blocking mechanism which is designed to block rotation of a key operated cylinder to a predetermined position wherein an ignition key can be removed. The crank lever has another arm which is bifurcated into a latch part and a follower part. The bell crank lever has an open position wherein a position pin of a gear select lever is movable into and out of a park range notch and a catch position wherein the latch part of the bell crank lever prevents the position pin from moving out of the park range notch.
With this known arrangement, since the follower part of the bifurcated arm of the bell crank lever engages the position pin and the bell crank lever rotates to pull or push the motion transmitting cable through a desired amount, options in the size of the bell crank lever and in mounting site of the bell crank lever are reduced.
An object of the present invention is to provide a gear select lever locking arrangement which allows a high degree of design freedom with regard to installation and layout of the component parts.